The Mermaid Project

Performance Art Series by Marta Jovanovic

Project Description

THE MERMAID PROJECT is inspired by the idea of strength that any woman has inside herself in order to change the world. Through a series of performance works and experiments I aim to prove that female mind and body are stronger than any fictional mermaid construct.

Inspirations, original ideas:
Mermaid was inspired by my traumatic childhood experience of almost drowning when living with my family in Israel. After that, in order to help me learn how to swim, my mother promised doll dresses if I take lessons but she never delivered. In the course of my adolescence I eventually learned how to swim but the negative connotation of unfulfilled promises and the deep-seated fear of water never left me. Decades later, I decided to conceive a performance as a way of overcoming these issues. My initial idea was to create an endurance performance and swim across the gulf of Naples in Italy. In working on this concept and taking up training with a swim instructor, several other, larger issues and questions emerged that also reflected on my current situation, my life as an artist, and as a woman in today’s macho world. I thought about: what are we afraid of? Can I do this alone? Do we need assistance, or can we struggle through existential angst alone? Realizing I would at least require someone to monitor and assist me in case I run into trouble on this very long swim, also my ego came into place, I want to do it alone but is it really possible? Issues of my own vulnerability and limitations emerged.

Performances executed:

BELGRADE MERMAID:

Realizing that, at this point, I needed to ditch this original plan for several reasons, I came up with other ideas to tackle this project. The idea of the mermaid came more into my focus and with it many related questions about beauty and sexuality: The mermaid signifies this mythical attraction, which is in fact really bizarre. She has a tail, no vagina, but she has boobs, beautiful hair, she sings well etc. is that enough already for men to find women sexy? She is a mythical creature just like women have become (and always been) mythical creatures. The result of these inquiries was the first iteration of “Belgrade Mermaid”, a live performance which I performed in 2018 during the Belgrade Art Biennial.

Belgrade Mermaid Original Proposal

A MERMAID's TALE:

After I finished the Belgrade Mermaid, I received funding from the Serbian Ministry of Culture to create a performance in 3D and I decided to re-do (and re-invent) the Mermaid,
responding to the specifics of VR technology. The work I ended up producing was a Virtual Reality Experience, witnessed by the audience through 3D goggles in an empty gallery.

Curators`s Statement

But the work continues to occupy me and there are more iterations that I have planned but could not execute or that I still plan on doing. For me, the winding road that the Mermaid takes is emblematic of the creative process behind every piece of performance art I do. Not one is or can follow a straight line – not only because I as an artist change and respond to different factors in my environment. But also because – blessing and curse – it is after all often the art market that determines our work through the platforms, means, and funding it provides us with and that we have to respond to and adjust to. Sometimes, as is the case with the Mermaid’s Tale, it turns out for the better, imbuing our work with different aspects, sometimes the economic factors are just limiting. The Mermaid is – and continues to be – very much a work in progress, but then again, is a piece of performance art ever ‘finished’?

Among the planned projects for the future are:

LA MAREA- MACRO, Museum of Contemporary Art Rome, not executed due to lack of funding.
In this performance piece I will walk barefoot on a pile of broken mirrors for many hours. I will put all my might into finding the right path on the broken mirrors, which functions as a metaphor for the crossroad where I found myself many times. This crossroad is symbolic for me especially in the city where I spent almost a decade of her life and that in many ways shaped me as a woman and as an artist. Women in this moment in history face many challenges: migration, survival, domestic violence while they are trying to build future for their children in real but also metaphorical terms as well as reflecting on their own legacy.

THE SCREAM - performance for video, video installation in collaboration with filmmaker Marcella Zanki, in planning venue TBA

Performance for video in which I will struggle to scream underwater. Conceived in collaboration with and directed by Marcella Zanki, Croatian filmmaker. The Scream is an immersive video installation. The audience will be invited to enter the room and experience almost in person the underwater scream. The 3D video installation with high quality sound will be projected in order to create the state of underwater anxiety that symbolizes the planet Earth (symbolically female) drowning as a consequence of global warming, pollution and other environmental concerns.

Questions and Needs:

-References:
I am seeking references for cultural concepts of the Mermaid, both in Western as well as non-Western history. Does the figure of the Mermaid, or a comparable made-up concept, exist in other cultures as well? What are their portrayals of femininity or do they relate to entirely different concepts? I am also looking for cultural-historic studies on the concept of the Mermaid and its significance.

-Artists Case Studies:
Are there any artists who have worked on the figure of the Mermaid (or comparable figures) and what was their take?

Contact about this project through ECC Performance Art: info@ecc-performanceart.eu

1. main image, Belgrade Mermaid," 2018, video Mina Sarenac / costume Olja Markovic
2. video, Marta Jovanovic, "Belgrade Mermaid," 2018, video Mina Sarenac / costume Olja Markovic

3. video, Marta Jovanovic, "Mermaid's Tale", 2019, video Prof. Branko Suric

4. La Marea", 2018, photo Danilo Mataruga
5. image by Manu Martino